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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Tracking wounded elk with Ziggy in New Mexico

It was great to hear from Jim Baker, who has been tracking wounded elk in New Mexico. He is an owner of "Ziggy" (Elka von Moosbach-Zuzelek), who was born February 28, 2008. Ziggy is a daughter of Billy and Gilda.

In Jim's own words:
"I describe how she did this year as phenomenal. At first I did not trust her on some of the first couple of times we went out. She was just going so fast and then I remembered from your book. If in doubt, trust your dog, so I did. She was called 12-14 times. Several of them were never to be found, high back shots and the elk was down, then gone. She found 5 of 8 possible. Some of the others I determined that the elk would probably live for at least few days or forever. After 2-3 miles with no real blood, and they got back with other elk.

The last one she found was at least 3 miles and 24 hours after the initial wound. I first realized I could trust her when we had gone 2-3 miles and I pulled her from the track as the bull got with other elk. We were just walking down a road that coincidentally the elk apparently came back on. She started getting excited and I looked down and there was a drop of blood about twice as big as a pinhead. I couldn't believe it. So after that wherever she wanted to go I was running behind her as best I could.

Here are a few photos."


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